From Paperwork and Smoothies Does Chaos Come
by FandomUnleashed204
Summary: Crosspost from my other story Good Will Haunting, Irondad and Spiderson extended cut of a flashback from Rhodey. Slightly altered from where it came from.


**Avengers Compound, 2017.**

Rhodey hated meetings with Ross, holographic or not, and he knew that Tony felt the same way. Lately, however, Tony was acting very strangely at meetings, namely because they were concerning Spider-Man. He knew that there was something going on between his friend and the vigilante, seeing as there was no way that the kid had been recruited to fight during the Avengers' 'Civil War', escaped Ross' notice for so long, gotten help during an incident on a ferry, and acquired a high-tech suit without Tony's help. Ross had given Tony an ultimatum: Bring Spider-Man in and have him sign the Accords or get in big trouble and have someone else do the job for him. Ross had even sent compliance forms, which had taken months to draft, and had digital copies of backup drafts if something had happened to the paper copies he had sent. There was no getting out of this for Tony.

Or so Ross had thought.

Tony was already late to the meeting when he walked in, carrying two baskets. One of them had the compliance and acceptance forms, and the other had a blender and fresh fruits. Murmurs spread throughout the other projections of people at the table and Ross scowled. Rhodey concealed his light amusement.

"Stark."

"Ross. I imagine my family name is rather unforgettable, nice to see that you haven't done the impossible and failed to recall it."

The general was fuming already. If you asked Rhodey, this was shaping up to be either hilarious, a disaster, or a potentially explosive combination of the two.

"What is the meaning of this?"

"Oh. This stuff? It's my breakfast. Hey FRIDAY, pull up my recipes and the original shared files of the forms. Let's talk business," Tony replied. Rhodey could tell that he was up to no good with his passive-aggressive and apathetic behavior, but it was the subtle, nervous quavering in his voice that gave it away. What was he trying to do?

Ross' eyebrow twitched as he began his speech. Some nonsense about Spider-Man being a danger to the public until he signed the Accords. Tony prepared a smoothie, and just as Ross launched into the angry portion dragging Spider-Man's name through the mud, Tony started blending.

"As I was saying, Spider-Man is a reckless, unregistered vigilante who-"

VRR-RRR rrrr!

"Ahem! Just as a trustworthy source says, Spider-Man is a menace capable of destroying-"

VRR-RRR rrrr!

"According to the-"

VRR-RRR rrrr!

"Spider-Man is a-"

VRR-RRR rrrr!

"Stark! Would you stop that?"

"Don't worry, I'm almost done," Tony deadpanned, pouring the brightly colored mixture into two large glasses and sampling it. He made a face. "It needs more ice."

The other holographic members of the committee sighed in relief. Getting ice wouldn't be nearly as noisy, right?

They couldn't have been farther from the truth.

Ross continued his speech, stopping as a series of very loud clicking and clunking noises came from the nearby kitchen.

"What is it now? Colonel Rhodes, stop that noise at once!"

Rhodey, to his credit, kept a completely straight face. "Tony is getting ice. You wouldn't like him when he's hangry."

Ross glowered at the reference to the Hulk and waited until Tony came back with ice in a bucket and another glass to continue. Tony chugged down the contents of his glass, poured the contents of the other full one back into the blender with a loud splorp noise that interrupted Ross again, and dumped the ice in just as the speech was starting to build into something serious. The cold, pissed off look in Tony's eyes betrayed the innocent expression on his face as he continued to interrupt the speech. When he was finished blending, he poured the smoothies, passed one to Rhodey with an unnecessary clunk and distracting slide across the table, but he was careful to not spill any. Tony finished off the entire contents of the blender and listened to Ross' blabbering with the other people in the meeting, but the speech had already lost most of its intended effectiveness because of the constant, distracting soundtrack Tony had provided. The man himself was muttering about recipe issues while sneezing occasionally at big moments in the monologue and working on something on one of the holographic screens FRIDAY was showing to him- and only him. Even Rhodey couldn't see it through the opaque background of the projection.

When Ross finally finished his speech, Tony got up to put away the last glass, offer Rhodey another round, and grab ingredients. He returned with lemons, water, coffee, and ice. The bags under his eyes seemed to have grown in size. Tony chugged the coffee and started to put ingredients into the blender, starting with the water. The repetitive hand motions distracted Rhodey from what went in next, but it didn't escape the notice of the members of Ross' captive audience. The gasps and pointing brought his attention back to Tony before Ross cut off his droning and turned around.

Tony had dropped the documents into the blender, topped them with ice, and threw in a bunch of unpeeled lemons. He was rubbing his eyes and moving for the on switch.

"STARK! Don't do it!" roared Ross, who had just registered the alarming contents of the blender.

Tony looked up and stared Ross down, making deliberate eye contact. "Don't do what?" he said, confused. He hit the button.

It took everything Rhodey had to not bust out laughing at the looks on everyone's faces. It was a card well played if he wanted to annoy the shit out of Ross and disrupt the meeting, but there had to be an ace up his friend's sleeve in a matter as serious as this. Spider-Man's ability to work freely and his secret identity were on the line.

"Oh. Oh shit, I'm sorry. FRIDAY, print me another copy of those forms, will you?" Tony asked.

"Sir, I'm afraid that the file has been compromised by an outside source and our printers are down for maintenance. Perhaps Secretary Ross can enlighten us as to why the file has been successfully hacked?" Even FRIDAY sounded apologetic.

"WHAT? Stark, if you tampered with the documents, I will have you ruined! It was foolproof!" yelled Ross, on the verge of a Hulk-sized temper tantrum.

"First of all, it was not me. FRIDAY can verify that the only thing I was working on this whole time were smoothie recipes that I post under a pseudonym online. FRIDAY, send him the smoothie files, please." Tony replied with an even tone, but anyone in the room, digitally or not, could tell that he was simmering with rage.

"Will do, sir."

"Secondly, don't you dare to even think about bringing me down over your mistake. You set this thing up in a perfectly hackable system. Any high school kid with a computer could lay waste to the oh-so-secure drafts alone. If you had taken me up on the cybersecurity offer, it might have cost a pretty penny but it sure as hell would have prevented this from happening."

Not content in his humiliation of Secretary Ross quite yet, Tony continued.

"And finally, do not take me for a fool. I signed those damn Accords, yes, but I have contacts: Lawyers, the media, more politicians than you could even think about threatening- and I know about that, Ross, because I did some digging. I can and will tear this whole thing you have going apart if you so much as look at me and my allies funny again. Good luck trying to re-do all of those documents. I'll be waiting. And in the meantime, you should just leave Spider-Man alone. He isn't a threat or a menace, he sticks close to home, and he's done more for the good of the people than you have in your entire life. Frankly, this entire thing has been a waste of time and resources while the real hunt should be for whoever was able to hack such important files. I'm out of here."

Tony practically stomped out before turning around. He looked at Rhodey, smiled, and changed his tone and mood entirely. "Rhodey, dear, I left you a smoothie in the fridge. There's another one if you want it. Pepper can have it if you don't finish it. No strawberries in it and it's the one with a purple umbrella. Yours has a pink one. I'm going to take a nap."

Ross, red-faced and ready to explode, barely managed to sputter out a simple "Meeting adjourned." There was no doubt that he was facing an investigation based on Tony's claims, but he would be back. Maybe with his tail tucked between his legs, maybe not.

Rhodey took a moment to just sit there after the call ended and soak it all in. And then all of the laughter he had been holding back burst over the dam and he found himself caught in a fit of laughter for the next ten minutes. He asked for the footage to be downloaded into the Avengers Blooper Reel and to be sent a copy of the incident.

* * *

When Rhodey was done, he found his friend passed out on the couch partially covered by a blanket. He smiled and stretched the blanket out over Tony, tucking him in and moving his phone to a more centered spot on the side table so it wouldn't fall off. He took a seat in a nearby chair and turned the TV on, muting it and adding subtitles. He too fell asleep in a few minutes before eventually waking up to the sound of Tony's phone going off, playing AC/DC's 'Problem Child.'

Tony snapped awake and grabbed it, accepting a call. "Hello?"

Rhodey could only hear Tony's side of the conversation but pretended to be sleeping.

"Hey, kid! How's the drive?"

"Good, good. How's school been treating you?"

"That's great!" Tony said before lowering his voice. "I have a few new ideas for suit updates I want your input on before I put them in. How does that sound? Lab day with pizza?"

"Alright, Parker. See you in a few." Tony ended the call with a chuckle. Rhodey peeked over at what he was doing for a moment, and he was grinning while tapping away at his phone.

"FRIDAY, I need four large cheese pizzas and an order of breadsticks from the nearest pizza place with a four-star rating or above. Whatever can get here fastest."

"Sure thing, boss. Anything else?"

"Three two-liters of Coke, ask for mentos under special instructions, and throw in a fifty dollar tip, please."

"Done, sir."

"Thanks, Fri."

"You're welcome."

A few minutes later, Rhodey pretended to wake up and went to the kitchen, taking his smoothie from the fridge. "Hey Tony, what do you want to do with the extra?" he asked.

Tony pondered it for a minute. "Leave it in there, Honey Bear. I might have some later or I'll just bring it to Pepper."

"Gotcha," Rhodey took a seat in the living room with his drink, unmuting the TV and wondering who was coming over. A kid?

"Gotta go prep the lab for a pet project with an, um, assistant of mine. Ignore him, he's fine and won't cause any trouble. I've got pizza coming in and one of them is for you, so go ahead and snag it on the way in," Tony said, typing away, distracted and buzzing with excitement.

"Sure thing, Tones." Rhodey watched him disappear into the hallways. He grabbed a book on the evolution of aircraft and halfheartedly skimmed through it while waiting for Tony to come back. It was only after ten minutes of boredom and raging curiosity did he finally see Tony and the visitor he was so hyped up over.

Rhodey's eyes wandered over the top of the cover and a slowly turning page to find a bouncy, grinning teenage boy fumbling with an access card down the hallway. He smiled and watched the amusing scene, unsure of whether to get up and help the kid in, but he finally slid it through just right and the doors clicked open. The kid trotted in and Rhodey finally got a closer look at the mysterious visitor. He was young, lean, with bright brown eyes and the hair to match. But it was what he was wearing and the way he was moving that caught Rhodey's trained eye. The kid's walk was light and bouncy, but it was surprisingly controlled and coordinated for a teenager. It was that and the effortless spring in his step that turned his head, but the sweatshirt really tipped him off. It looked suspiciously like one of Tony's old ones from their college days back at MIT.

The boy walked in and spotted him on the couch, eyes widening in recognition. Rhodey tensed up, expecting another half-disguised look of pity directed at his legs but was instead met with one of admiration.

"Woah. You're Colonel Rhodes, right? With the War Machine suit?"

Rhodey, surprised, chuckled. "Yep, that's me."

"That's so cool!" The kid looked absolutely starstruck.

"What's your name, kid?" Rhodey asked.

"Oh gosh, I forgot to introduce myself. Um, hi, my name's Peter."

"Nice to meet you, Peter."

"Nice to meet you too, Mr. Rhodes!"

"Please, just call me Rhodey."

"Okay, Mr. Rhodey."

He was about to tell Peter to literally just call him Rhodey when Tony walked in with pizza and soda, already covered in grease and motor oil. "That's not how it works, kid. Just Rhodey means just Rhodey."

The kid lit up even more, which Rhodey didn't think was humanly possible. "Hey Mr. Stark! Can I help you with that?"

"Sure kiddo. Grab a bottle or two and leave a box on the counter for Rhodey for later. Yep, that one. Right off the top. Thanks."

"You're welcome, Mr. Stark. Are you sure you don't need me to carry anything else?"

"Nah, I'm all set. You ready for a lab day?"

"Of course!"

As the two walked away and Peter started chattering after some prompting on Tony's behalf, it clicked. Rhodey could see it in the look of slowly relieving tension that had carried over from after the meeting on Tony's face melting away like butter as Peter talked. The sweatshirt that was definitely Tony's based on that one memorable worn patch on the back that Peter was wearing with the same mixture of pride and happiness in Tony's eyes. The kid's voice, his excitement.

He exchanged a look with Tony as they passed. Alarm flashed briefly on Tony's face when his friend registered his knowing expression but it faded when he made a zipping his lips motion. Tony smiled and the two continued on their way to presumably work on things.

Maybe not work on things the entire time, but Rhodey would swear up and down to Pepper that it was definitely a rogue drone that he was working on that flew past her window. Definitely not a soda rocket built by a couple of snickering superheroes just to pull pranks. Same with the one that flew through an open window and into a room full of people working on potentially retrieving the files Ross had lost and tracking down the culprit.

By the time the kid had left the following morning, Rhodey had finally decided to look at the footage of the meeting. He wound up spewing leftover smoothie all over the table in a fit of laughter. "Damn, does Tony hate paperwork," he said to himself while cleaning and chuckling. Then he heard a blender noise from the recording and lost it all over again.


End file.
